fiction and psychology

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately. I usually don't have a ton of time to read, because of Facebook. Oh, and my 4 kids and emotionally compromised spouse. But recently, I've been on a diet, you know, and also I paid off my grand larceny fees at the local library and have been reinstated as a member, although I feel the baleful eye of the law on us from every direction.

Let me tell you, I read some pretty weak fiction on occasion. I think I'm in a downward trend; I started reading when I was 4 and, being the last child of geniuses, began with Dickens and Tolstoy and then have gradually dialed it back to Christian romantic comedy, pretty much. I know it's in part because life has kicked me in the face a couple of times and so I'm not in a hurry to read about existentialism and suffering. Or Russians. I'll read about a Russian ex-spy who fell in love with an Navy Seal and got snuck out of the country, sure. But in general, I am wary of Russians, because of all the movies. 

I'm a smart person. I'm not terribly educated, but I'm smart and I'd like to think, relatively deep. So why is that I am thrilled by a good marriage-of-convenience novel? Two souls, forced into a marriage of convenience, which will never last because one of them is about to die or something, or get deported or something, and they don't even like each other, but they start falling in love because they're all married and stuff. And then, once they decide they do love each other, then the plot twist where they get an option to bail out of their sham marriage and maybe they even do, but then they regret it and they have to run really fast in the rain and stuff. 

I've been married 16 years, and I love my husband, but I have yet to a) weep in the rain or b) run in the rain. When it rains, we generally are in the car, together, talking about bills, and then when we get out we don't spend any time kissing in the rain, we get the heck inside where we have climate control. That's romantic, air conditioning. 

But I do love it when they find each other and there's some crying and witty banter even while they're getting bombed or kidnapped and some smooching in the rain and then the epilogue where she's pregnant, even though that was supposed to be impossible or something. Sometimes I even shed a tear. That book was almost grammatically perfect, I think, blotting my eyes with a tissue. Almost.

I don't know what that says. It's probably something psychological. Or maybe a vitamin deficiency, who knows?  Anyway, I have to wrap this up now because there are some ladies who thought they were working a homestead deal to own their own land but the unscrupulous man in charge of their travel has actually advertised them as brides from the East. Bad news. Predicting bad guy gets busted, ladies find love, Civil War PTSD victim shaves his beard and is stunning. Also finds love. 

Oh, and also, there's these kids running around here. Something needs to happen with them.